


A.K.A.

by notthebigspoon



Series: Marionette [2]
Category: Kane - Fandom, Leverage
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-06-03
Updated: 2011-06-03
Packaged: 2017-10-20 02:25:36
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,132
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/207777
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/notthebigspoon/pseuds/notthebigspoon
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When Eliot comes home, he's tired and afraid but he adjusts, because a hitter is only as good as his ability to adapt to any given situation. These days, it seems like his only job is threading his present with his past.</p>
            </blockquote>





	A.K.A.

**Author's Note:**

> Sequel to Funeral March of the Marionette. Spoilers up to season 3, disregards the finale.

Eliot wakes up the day after he comes home with a crick in his neck and Steve's steady breathing tickling his cheek. It feels as if he never left and that's the most wonderful feeling in the world. He makes breakfast in bed for Steve and quietly slips into a life of bland normality. As normal as life can get with Steve. His friends are more like degenerate circus clowns than normal human beings.

They're nice enough and he remembers a few of them, though none of them seem to recognize him. The only person who looks at him twice is Riley, who asks him, very earnestly, if he has an evil twin somewhere. It's the kind of question Hardison would ask and Eliot has to force a bark of laughter, make some witty comment that has Riley grinning, and excuse himself for more beer.

The days slide by one after another and he mostly fills them with a case of home improvement tinted madness, everything, down to that loose step in the basement. With a little coaxing, Steve gets a guitar in his hands. With threats of never cooking for Eliot ever again, he gets Eliot into the studio. It makes him think of Parker in that ridiculous duck dress and Eliot spends the afternoon making Bjork jokes.

It's hard to do anything without being somehow reminded of the team. Steve's friends are not his own, and he misses his own friends. He misses work and being part of a team, the satisfaction of knowing that he helped one more person that would otherwise have slipped through the cracks. He wonders, a little, how the team is managing without a hitter.

The thought that they might have replaced him with someone else hurts more than he'd like to admit.

Some nights, usually only when it's storming hard enough for the sky to flash with lightning and for the claps of thunder to drown out the TV or their voices, he'll tell Steve about the way Parker would break into his house with no warning and he'd wake up to her sitting on the foot of his bed with a giant bowl of cereal, the bedroom TV set to the DVD player as she sang along with Cobweb Hotel.

“I don't know how the hell she does it. Nate said he's stopped wondering but I can't. And... I sleep through it. How the hell do I do that? She makes enough noise to rouse an elephant, and I sleep through it. When I was in war zones, hell, when I was out of them, the slightest thing and I'd be reaching for my knife.”

Steve's hum was non committal, his fingers didn't stop their soothing combing through his hair, didn't stop scratching his scalp right at the top of his neck. “Love has a lot to do with that, settles you.” He doesn't say anything about Eliot's inability to sleep through the night in their bed, or the way he tenses every time Steve wakes him with a kiss before he heads out to the studio.

“But you...”

“Have not been around for nearly ten years. You're not used to me anymore and you had two years to get close to them, to trust them with everything about you. I know you love me and I know you're trying. That's enough for me.”

It really shouldn't settle the conversation and it does nothing to assuage his guilt over not yet trusting Steve as much as he trusts a patchwork family that he hasn't seen in months. But Steve is nothing if not honest and if he says it's enough, then it's enough. He's gently prodded to tell more about the team and he does, settling with his back against Steve's chest, eyes focused on the tongues of lightning flickering out in the distance.

Sophie would drag him to independent cinemas or the theater. He'd met this with trepidation, but her taste in movies and plays actually wasn't as terrible as her acting was. She loved these things even if she wasn't any good at them herself. And he may have put up a terrible fuss each time without fail but he never minded too much, and he always smiled when she'd rest her head on his shoulder and steal his popcorn.

Nate was a short conversation, nothing more than sports and beer, and if Steve noticed the disappointment in Eliot's voice when he mentioned the beer, he didn't say anything. For that Eliot is glad, because he's not quite ready to share the bad things, like how much it killed him to watch the closest thing he had to a father figure destroying himself for the second time in as many years.

He's yet to mention Hardison as much more than a secondary character in stories about other members of the team. Steve's not stupid, he knows, and has probably read between the lines about what their relationship was. There's the slightest hint of jealousy when he encourages Eliot to continue after a hitch in his breath when he mentions the geek's name, but no more than that. After all, he's casually mentioned previous lovers and Eliot's met a few of them. The one he hates the most is probably Jensen, if only because the bastard's so goddamned pretty and still very comfortable with draping himself over Steve at any given time.

The story telling isn't always limited to him. In fact, more often than not, Steve is the one sharing information because some days Eliot doesn't want to talk at all and Steve's got to fill the silence. Mostly it's with music but some days he's in a sharing mood and he'll tell about the shenanigans that he's gotten up to in the past few years, with Jason or Riley or Jensen. The most absurd stories tend to involve two of Jensen's friends, people he's worked with on that stupid ass show about the demon hunters that Hardison had loved so much. For all that though, Misha and Jared aren't so bad.

They're piecing together their lives with a mixed bag of anecdotes, rebuilding the years they'd lost that they could have had together. These lives will probably never overlap, though Eliot's never going to rule out the possibility that the team will come back, telling his fool ass that family is family and if he runs out on them again, they'll beat the snot out of him and leave him naked on the White House lawn.

He mentions as much to Steve one night as they're getting ready to head out to taco night at Steve's parents house. Steve snorts. “Y'know what, you should lead in with that at dinner tonight. Misha used to work there.”

He does. Misha roars.


End file.
